I actually wrote this several days ago, in a funk, on the commute home. It was --inspired, I guess-- by something I read in Rowan's journal, although it isn't a response so much as a triggered musing. Why am I putting it up now? I don't know...spirit of the perverse, perhaps. Story of my life, actually.

...What if, to reach your dream, you had to betray the trust of someone you can't live without? My life is not worth writing journals about and so the choice becomes academic at best. Perhaps , more to the point, _all_ of our lives are worth a novel, and the trick is to find out who has written about you. Books are not written about _a_ person, but generalized for _every_ person.

Even a child of plenty understands catastrophic loss when her pet rabbit dies. It is not the depth of her pain compared to others that matters, but the depth compared to her own experience. Only when taken over a lifetime can the sorrow of any 2 lives be compared, and even then it's impossible to tell - a single death stands stark against a life of disappointment. Which hurts more? Which deserves true pity?

...Of course, I ran out of paper at this point, so I never finished whatever thought was in my head at the time. And what's there wasn't phrased very well. But I don't dare change any of it because I would inadvertently change the intent (although I did spell-check it for my own sanity ;D ). I know I meant, at the end there, that a single bad event in an otherwise calm life would leave a much bigger, more noticeable scar than a horrible event in a life full of the same, where the scar blends into 'just another disappointment'. Makes me wonder if this is why otherwise blessed-life people go ballistic over the stupidest things - it's not the depth but the contrast.

I knew I should've stayed in psych; all the money I could be making off my own stupid insights... *sigh* Oh well, time to go ballistic ;)